451 CAOS Theory 
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Canonical partners with IBM for closed source database
Matthew Aslett, February 21, 2008 @ 6:24 am ETHere’s an interesting bit of news from the blurred line between open and closed source software. Ubuntu sponsor Canonical has announced that it is reselling IBM’s DB2 Express-C database as both a standalone software package and as a software appliance with VMware. While Express-C is free as in beer, it is not free as in speech. Of course, if you want support it is not free at all.
DB2 Express-C is available as a free download from th Ubuntu repositories for Ubuntu 7.10 or later, while users have to register to be sent download instructions for the DB2 Express-C vitual appliance, which requires VMWare Server, VMWare Player 2.0, VMWare Workstation 5.5 or VMWare ESX Server.
Canonical is also selling an annual support subscription from its store. The subscription covers both Ubuntu and DB2 Express-C and costs $3,750 per year. In comparison, 24×7 support for Ubuntu server alone costs $3,716 a year, and an annual subscription to DB2 Express-C costs $3,080 per year, so that’s a pretty decent saving.
As well as support, the subscription version also adds functionality for HA and DR, data replication, and fixpack updates and is limited to four cores (two sockets), and 4GB of memory (the free download is limited to two cores and 2GB of memory).
While it is not unheard of for Canonical to offer closed source partner products (it teamed with Parallels earlier this month on the Parallels Workstation for Linux desktop virtualization software) it is interesting to see the company siding with IBM and DB2 Express-C rather than MySQL, PostgreSQL or Ingres.
Categories: Linux, Software
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Doesn’t Canonical already bundle PostgreSQL and MySQL with every copy of Ubuntu?
Of course, I should have said “siding with IBM and DB2 Express-C rather than MySQL, PostgreSQL or Ingres for commercial support”
Rich:
It does. But IBM’s DB is much better enterprise software, at least for now, and it is much more familiar and appealing to business users.
And as another arguments: where 2 database servers are good, 3 are better. Not many people really intend to mess with the application’s code.
[...] Canonical partners with IBM for closed source database [...]
Canonical cannot sustain growth with open source alone. The revenue has to come in to allow for all the enhancements and for the free distribution of open source code. Open source code is usually forum supported so there again, revenue is lot adequate to support growth. By mixing private closed offerings, were revenue from support is higher, Canonical can continue to grow and maintain market position as a major distributor of linux.